When Einstein Tilted at Windmills
nautil.us
nautil.us
“On a bright summer day in the open air, the world with my ego suddenly appeared to me as one coherent mass of sensations,” he later wrote. He felt, in that moment, there was no reality sitting “out there,” independent of his sensations, and likewise that there was no self sitting “in here,” independent of its sensations. He grew certain that there could be no real difference between mind and matter, between perceiving subject and perceived object. “This moment was decisive for my whole view,” he wrote.
The problem is that it happens in little cliques of 2-3 people, and it's hard to meet a new clique. (I mostly do intoxicated at parties.)
I've been thinking of trying to organize "Work in Chalk" parties or something next summer, where we can all go hang out and work on our theories in sidewalk chalk at the park. (I used to do homework this way in uni.)
It's just hard to guage how many people would be interested and how to reach them.
1. There's a fine line between open-minded and irrational, and unfortunately a lot of people end up crossing it. This becomes a negative feedback loop wherein more and more people don't want to risk their reputations by sounding like they identify with irrational / fringe groups or ideas.
2. It's easy to identify genius in retrospect, but prior to being validated, people who really think ahead of their time are by definition in the minority, so they either have to get used to being laughed at / criticized, or give up. So I guess I would say, keep looking for peers who are open-minded but not irrational. I went to Carnegie-Mellon (`03) and knew hundreds of bright people there, but only 1 or 2 who I considered to be able to think out of the box, as you say. They're people worth finding, though!
Also, HN in particular can have a kneejerk objectivist flavour that discourages intuitive, unconventional discussion. Dismissing people who seem irrational is not a good way to encourage healthy cognitive diversity, and we could do with less of it.
The point I was making was that those people do a disservice to open discussion because nobody wants to be painted with that brush, so it ends up becoming an HN-type situation where, as you rightly pointed out, there is a resistance to new ideas. There's probably a formal-discourse type term for it.
Then I switched to the computer industry when I finished my studies, and the atmosphere suddenly changed.
This is a lot more common than most people realize.
"I have always felt it as a stroke of good fortune that early in life, at about the age of fifteen, I lighted, in my fathers library, on a copy of Kant's Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. The book made at the time a powerful and inextinguishable impression on me, the like of which I never afterwards experienced in any of my philosophical reading. Some two or three years later the superfluity of the thing in itself abruptly dawned upon me. On a bright summer day in the open air, the world with my ego suddenly appeared to me as one coherent mass of sensations, only more strongly coherent in the ego. Although the actual working out of this thought did not occur until a later period, yet the moment was decisive for my whole view. I still had to straggle long and hard before I was able to retain the new conception in my special subject. With the valuable parts of physical theories we necessarily assume a good dose of false metaphysics, which it is very difficult to sift out from what should be preserved, especially when those theories have become very familiar to us. At times, too, the traditional, instinctive views would arise with great power and place impediments in my way. Only by alternate studies in physics and the physiology of the senses, and by historico-physical investigations (since about 1863) and after having endeavoured in vain to settle the conflict by a physico-psychological monadology (in my lectures on psychophysics...) have I attained to any considerable stability in my views." from 'the Analysis of Sensations'
Thinking Fast and Slow was written by one man but he talks about the great walks he took with his friend which he claims was the best work he ever did.
A married couple figured out X-rays and revolutionized medicine.
Jobs and Wozniak revolutionized computing.
It takes two to tango... very few people are alone in their ventures. The most successful people are those who can surround themselves well.
That sounds like a slightly Victorian way of describing ADHD. The entire quote is basically a paraphrasing of something every intelligent kid with ADHD has probably heard a million times, "You are so smart, why don't you just do your work?"
There was another paper where (IIRC) they flat out derived basics of geometry from entanglement, but I don't remember what it was called. Hopefully someone else knows...
> Besso was short with narrow, pointed features and a thick pile of coarse black hair on his head and chin.
That's a fairly objective description - there's even a photo of him. Moving along.
> ...Einstein had a look of cool detachment. Besso had the look of a nervous mystic.
Come on! We need an "artist's impression" disclaimer here.